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West recruiting thugs to crush Syria: Analyst

A political analyst says the West is hypocritically recruiting the same thugs it supposedly waged the bloody and costly ‘war on terror’ against a decade ago, to topple the Syrian government today.

An analyst says for “those with eyes,” the mask of Western pretence at defending international law and human rights has now been ripped off.

“In asserting their geopolitical objective over Syria, the Western governments are openly deploying terrorists and killers who supposedly were the reason why Western governments spent trillions of dollars fighting foreign wars, invading and occupying sovereign countries, destroying millions of innocent lives, incarcerating and torturing thousands, and turning over democratic societies into draconian police states,” Finian Cunningham wrote in an article on Press TV website.

Cunningham said the reports and videos showing the Western-backed mercenaries of the so-called Free Syrian Army bolstered by al-Qaeda brigades and other terrorists have been greeted with “barely veiled glee” in Washington and the European capitals.

“The ‘terror’ that Washington and other Western governments have promoted as the defining existential threat to democratic civilization over the past 10 years, has suddenly and seamlessly morphed into ‘war with terror’ when it comes to Syria.”

However, Cunningham said, for “those with eyes,” the mask of Western pretence at defending international law and human rights, has now been ripped off.

“The face revealed is a grotesque, salivating monster, whose motives are evidently selfish elite power and domination in the strategic Middle East region. And this objective is to be achieved by any means necessary -- foremost by the collusion with bloodthirsty killers.”

In the 1980s, the United States assisted the so-called Mujahedeen militants in Afghanistan to fight the forces of the former Soviet Union. The al-Qaeda later emerged from the same group that had years earlier received US weapons and training.

Just over a decade later, the US attacked Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime, which it accused of harboring al-Qaeda.

Political observers say the US favors the presence of al-Qaeda militants and other extremists in Syria to help the country’s armed insurgents overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

According to chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers, as many as a quarter of the many insurgent groups in Syria see themselves as al-Qaeda offshoots.

Cunningham said the current situation in Syria reveals “a descent into barbarism and an open embrace of international lawlessness” by the same governments that appoint themselves to lecture the rest of the world on the principles of democracy and human rights.

“Forget the fancy titles, manners and clothes - ongoing violence in Syria shows that the foreign policy of these [Western] powers is being conducted by terrorists and thugs in high offices.”

A recent New York Times article details how President Obama has become personally involved in an elaborate internal process by which his administration decides who will be the next victim of America's drone strikes. The drones target Al Qaeda and Taliban militants based in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Afghan border. However, the drone program was brought to a temporary halt in November, after NATO forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a border outpost, mistaking them for militants, but resumed this year.

Estimates state that while there were 52 such strikes during George W Bush's time, this number has risen to 282 over the past three and a half years, with officials justifying it has international “self defence” against a stateless enemy.

Cooperation has been at a standstill for more than six months since Pakistan shut down NATO military supply routes to Afghanistan after U.S. forces accidentally killed 24 Pakistani border forces during a friendly fire incident in November.

Obama’s top legal adviser Harold Koh insists that this killing spree is legal under international law because the US has the inherent right to self-defense.

Norwegian peace researcher cites the original purpose of the Nobel Peace prize was to "diminish the role of military power in international relations", and if the overseer of such foundations as the Stockholm County Administrative Board finds that the founder Alfred Nobel's will is not being honoured then Obama (2009), Liu Xiaobo (2010), and last year's Liberians could face their awards suspended as 'champions of peace'.

Obama pushed for an end to the use of torture on terror suspects, the closure of the Guantanamo Bay military prison, and for trying detainees in federal courts. For those efforts he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama won in 2009, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won in 2010, and last year the award was split between Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.

As Obama nears the end of his first term as President, he has done little to live up to the terms of the award. The conflict in Afghanistan, which the UN estimates has killed nearly 12,000 civilians so far, continues under his watch

The Nobel Peace Prize has lost its integrity for being used for political reasons, but no justification, as an award to President Obama when at the time he did nothing to deserve it. It snows the darker side of Obama's administration.

Previously published on Global Research on 26 August 2012 and Frontier Post (Pakistan) on 24 August 2012.

As the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism has demanded of the United States to open itself up to independent probe into its use of drone strikes or let the United Nations do it, Pakistan too has served a strong demarche on it over its stepped up drone incursions into the Pakistani tribal territory, especially the North Waziristan Agency.

Drone attacks were not acceptable in any case as these constituted not only a violation of the international laws but also an assault on Pakistan’s sovereignty, said a protest missive handed over to a US embassy official by the foreign office yesterday. But will the United States hearken to these protesting voices? You must be joking. Not even an outside chance. For, America thinks for being the world’s sole superpower it is above every international norm, rule and law. The others it would want must abide by that international regime strictly but itself it would not. It strikes the odious notes of exceptionalism and expects all others to respect it as being an exceptional country and an exceptional people, not liable at all to any international laws and conventions or any international justice system whereas it expects the others to be duty-bound to follow them.

Then why would it change its course when it finds its drone banditry so effective in perpetuating its adventurisms abroad without putting its own soldiers’ lives at any risk at all? Why would it care for the UN that it uses as its handmaiden or for Pakistan that it deems to be its enslaved colony? They may cry, but they will simply be crying in the wilderness. Not a leaf would flap in Washington. Indeed, as the criticism of its drone banditry is increasingly escalating worldwide, it has put more punch in its thuggish adventurism. Not only President Barack Obama now personally approves the targets to be struck by the drones.

He has also decreed that anyone in the vicinity of an intended target will be deemed a combatant, even if civilian, and hence liable to be slaughtered justifiably. So the warlords of the United States give a damn if the people killed in their drone attacks are real terrorists or innocent civilians. And indeed the data complied by human rights workers show a heavy toll being exacted on civilian lives in these barbaric drone assaults.

Some terrorists may be killed. But many more massacred are innocent children, women and men having nothing to do with militancy or terrorism. Yet the American warlords are continuing with this savage carnage without any qualms. The international laws stipulate that every effort must be made to arrest the criminals and bring them to justice. But they find it more convenient just to eliminate, no lesser for fear of the eliminated spilling the beans, if caught alive and brought to justice. After all, those on the kill list of the American warlords are the ones who were once their protégés and proxies.And it would not be any wrong to assume that with this drone adventurism at this point in time they are indeed pulling a fast one on Pakistan.

In their drone strikes on Eid days in North Waziristan Agency, they slaughtered some two dozens of people. And if the media reports are any guide, the slaughtered were all the people of Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the militant commander holding in a peace accord with the Pakistan military. The American warlords’ game plan appears to be to alienate him with the Pakistani state and push him on towards the TTP fugitives now holed up in parts of the North Waziristan Agency and the bordering Afghan province of Kunar and Nuristan to the great grief of Pakistan. Whose proxies are these TTP fugitives is anybody’s guess.

The American warlords are thus at a very diabolical game. And the Islamabad establishment would be very foolish if it doesn’t expose their demoniac scheme to the world community. It must open up its tight lips and speak out the home truths at every available forum at home and abroad. Mere demarches wouldn’t do. Already, with their drone banditry they have turned a lot of our tribal compatriots against the Pakistani State. And with this drone adventurism over these days they are spawning troubles in our tribal areas that ultimately will prove very disastrous for our country and the nation.

The following was posted in response to a story Report: 120 French Troops Supporting Syria Rebels Captured of 1 March 2012 at http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/03/01/report-120-french-troops-supporting-syria-rebels-captured-89202Ynsp; The Syrian Girl and Land Destroyer have also been advised.

It seems to me that this, alongside the subsequent of the capture of Saudi and Qatari mercenaries has been forgotten.

Why?

Why couldn't the Syrian Government have revealed evidence of the criminality of the French, Qatari and Saudi Governments to the world, for example through video broadcasts of the captured mercenaries?

I can only assume that the captured mercenaries are not still being held and so must have been quietly released. If so, then an opportunity for the Syrian Government to end the illegal war being waged against Syria by France and its allies and proxies will have been lost and at least many hundreds of Syrians will have paid with their lives since then.

How could the Syrian Government, which I had presumed has the interests of its citizens at heart, have been so stupid?

Apparent evidence of the capture of French Mercenaries on Syria soil variously numbered at 13, 100 and 'more than 120' can be found at the following pages: